Murder Mystery
by chocolatecheesecakes
Summary: What starts out as a harmless little party for Hermione soon turns a whole lot darker…


**This was written for the Triwizard Tournament. Again. I have a list of five prompts, and it's a murder mystery party. I'm not allowed to say anything. Word count : 1,080.**

Murder Mystery

Dean Thomas was on his back on the floor of Gryffindor Tower, dabs of sparkly nail polish painted down his bare left arm and his left cheek. He couldn't honestly say that he had been in this situation before, especially as red nail polish wasn't something he owned.

It was tempting to just sit up straight, and he would have done, if the words that Harry had said to him ("Look, Hermione just really wants this party, humour her, please") lingered in his mind. That and the fact that the normally rather small amount of 'Eighth-Year' Gryffindors was now increased by two.

It was the evening of Hermione's nineteenth birthday, and Dean was seriously regretting his decision to back down to Ron's pleading and play the 'dead body' for the event. The Firewhiskey was just within his vision, perched on a table only a few metres away.

It couldn't hurt.

Dean checked his watch, before swearing, as he remembered that it was stopped – a clue as to his time of death, according to Harry. There were no other clocks within his vision right now, so Dean simply rolled his eyes and sat up, reaching out for the Firewhiskey.

There was a loud thumping noise, and Dean abruptly slammed his back down on the floor, wincing as he did. He daren't speak – Harry had a rather nasty temper – and instead let his eyes flicker shut, and forced his breathing to slow.

His blood ran cold. There was someone- something there. He could feel it's cold breath on his neck.

"W-w-who is it?" Dean called out apprehensively, his heart bursting out of his chest. "Harry? R-Ron? T-this isn't f-"

There was a sudden, sharp pain in his neck, and Dean opened his mouth to scream, but then the weapon pierced his throat and he blacked out.

oOo

"Oh, Harry!" Hermione gushed, throwing her arms around her best friend's neck. "Thank you so much! You have _no _idea what this means to me!"

"Excuse me." Ron coughed, a little put out, waiting for Hermione to bestow the same treatment upon him, along with a quick peck on the lips, before he stopped pouting.

"Oh no!" Seamus chimed in, just as the plan dictated, walking over to the prone body of his best friend and pressing two fingers to Dean's neck. "Dean's dead!"

Hermione sprang into action almost instantly, kneeling down next to Dean and studying him intently. Harry crossed his arms and shared a knowing look with Ginny, who was perched over the other side of the room.

It just so happened that Hermione had been hankering for a murder mystery party since she was a little girl, but her parents had dismissed it as a silly notion. Ron had managed to get the information out of her (Harry wasn't entirely sure that he wanted to know how), and the planning had commenced the month previously.

"Ah ha!" A triumphant call emerged from the centre of the room, and Hermione held up the blood-stained knife that was acting as a 'murder weapon' of sorts. The blood came from Hagrid – who almost always had a few bags of Dragon Blood _somewhere._

"So this is what killed Dean…?" Hermione pondered aloud, turning the knife over and over in her hands, being careful not to knick herself. "That rules out you as the murderer Ron, no one would let you anywhere near a knife."

As Ron's face burned, Harry nodded to Neville, whose job it was to turn the light off so Ginny - the murderer for this charade – could throw a Quaffle at Ron's head. Ron had protested vehemently about the 'sissy way to die, getting hit by a _Quaffle_', but Ginny had found it amusing.

The lights flickered out, and Ginny let out a convincing scream as the Quaffle whooshed past Harry's head, smacking Ron right on the cranium. When the lights turned back on, Ron was lying on his back, eyes closed, and leg twitching in a manner that most dead bodies did not possess.

"Not Ron too!" Neville called out, walking into the room (he would be the third to 'die'). "Hermione, you have to help us!"

"GINNY!" Harry yelled, racing over to where his girlfriend was also lying on the ground, with her eyes wide open and unseeing. He grabbed her arm, hoping that a little pain would revive her, before pressing two fingers to her neck in a desperate hope that she might be okay.

Ron was up and by his sister's side in a second. Losing a brother recently was bad enough, but losing his sister too… Harry's fear felt ridiculous in comparison. As Harry felt for a pulse again – just once more, just in case – his fingers snagged on a silver locket tied around Ginny's neck.

Tied too tightly.

"We need to get her to Madam Pomfrey." Ron pushed Harry away. "She's still breathing, whoever tried to kill her didn't do it very well."

He pointed to the slight rise and fall of Ginny's chest, and Harry exhaled thankfully. Then he looked up again, right at Hermione, who was staring at Dean, who didn't seem to have moved an inch.

"Dean?" Harry stood up, wiping his clammy palms on his jeans, and turning to Neville, who was staring at something held in his hands, out of Harry's vision. "Neville-"

"Dean's dead." Seamus said, his voice choked up and his eyes misty. Then Neville held up a red pillar candle, a long one, long and thing with a sharpened-off end.

"It was the candle." Hermione said, her eyes not leaving Dean. "Harry, please say that this is part of your party, please say it is."

Harry looked down at the dead body of his friend, then up at the blood-stained candle, then at the prone body of his barely breathing girlfriend in his best friend's arms. "No." He admitted, his throat closing up. "It- it isn't, Hermione."

"Then who killed Dean?" Seamus asked, eyes unblinking and unmoving from his dead best friend. "Who would… _Do_ such a thing? Especially with a _candle?_"

"It could be any of us." Hermione answered for Harry, looking up finally, eyes sparkling with tears. "I'm going to find Professor McGonagall-"

And then, Harry realised something. Something important.

He could feel someone's breath on his neck.


End file.
